


Pressed Flower

by driflew



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:48:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27440716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/driflew/pseuds/driflew
Summary: “The woman on the page has a smile that is warm and light, and next to her, Sasha’s almost feels fake.”Tim finds a stranger in his sketchbook.
Relationships: Sasha James & Tim Stoker
Comments: 16
Kudos: 77





	Pressed Flower

**Author's Note:**

> ive been thinking for like a month abt what kind of an effect the notThem might have on art, and what would be scarier: for art to change, or for it to stay the same?

Tim doesn’t know what he’s looking at. His hands shake, slightly, as he stares, and his head swims as it tries to take in the image, but he doesn’t understand it.

He knows what he’s holding. In his hands is an old sketchbook, left over from an even older hobby. There’d been a time in his life where he’d hopped hobbies, though nowhere near as much as his brother once had, and one of those hobbies had been art.

He had, like most things, dropped it after losing Danny, but he’d returned to it once or twice over the years. It’s a nice way to take his mind off everything, which he certainly needs right now, with Jon going fully off the deep end and Sasha suddenly ghosting him for her new boyfriend.

So he’d dug up the book and flipped to a random page, and he’d stared, even as the floor dropped out from underneath him.

It looks like his art. Sort of messy, sort of out of practice. Not worthy of any awards, sure, but it’s not like Tim is trying to win any. It’s in Tim’s own sketchbook, with a half-joking signature set in the corner, looping and fancy, dated like a real artist. He remembers sitting down with the intent of drawing this image, hunched over in the chair he’s frozen above now. He even recognizes the photo it’s based off of, because it’d been his phone lock screen for a little while.

Undoubtably, Tim had drawn this. But it isn’t right, he knows it isn’t right, and bile climbs up his throat as he looks at it. The only part of this image that matches his memory is Sasha’s name, scrawled beside the portrait he never made. His handwriting, of course. 

There’s nothing sinister about the woman in the image. Her smile is warm, or at least as near as Tim could make it. Her eyes are elsewhere, focused on something off to the left of the viewer. Her hair is long, and Tim can see how he’d struggled a little when he’d drawn her to replicate the way it had curled, eraser shavings still pressed into the page like flower petals. It looks like he’d struggled with the glasses, too—The round rims are a little wonky, but he’d clearly done his best to make them as close as possible to whatever image he’d been referencing. He’d even drawn in the beginning of someone’s shoulder next to her, her own shoulder just barely shorter than her neighbor’s.

Tim drops the book, still open to the stranger’s image, so he can dig out his phone. It doesn’t take him long to find the picture he knows this is meant to be referencing, and he near-slams his phone on the table next to it.

On his phone is the picture he remembers, the Sasha in that matching the woman he sees at work every day. Her hair is short and straight, cut to hang just below her ears. In the picture, she sits beside Martin, next to whom she is a head and a half shorter. She’s laughing at Jon, just out of frame, who complains about something or another which Tim hadn’t been listening to.

They’d had a game for some time, him and Sasha, of trying to sneak pictures of one another when the other wasn’t looking. It’d stopped around Prentiss, when Sasha had broken her phone, and Tim had returned covered in bandages and awful scars. Most of the pictures had been pretty terrible, but he’d always liked this one. It was one of the few times he’d caught her smiling, rather than surprising her with something unflattering.

She’d been trying to hide her laughter behind her hand, but he’d managed to catch a picture of it anyway.

The woman in the art, he notices, wears a bracelet that Sasha doesn’t own and hadn’t been wearing, and he can see how attentive he’d been to mimicking the details. 

The woman on the page has a smile that is warm and light, and next to her, Sasha’s almost feels fake. Looking at her makes Tim’s head spin, and pressure builds in his and slams him between the eyes in a steady, brutal rhythm. He should close the book, he should—

Tim is reaching for his phone before he even realizes it. He jumps to his recent calls, clicking on the unnamed contact. He still hasn’t added Sasha’s new number to his phone. Maybe he’ll do that now, after he calls her.

It rings once, twice, three—

“Tim?” She—Sasha, who is fine, who is _right there_ on the other hand of the line, who has short hair and has never needed glasses—asks, and he doesn’t sigh, if only so she doesn’t worry about the relief escaping him, “Did you need something?”

“Oh,” He’d wanted to hear her voice so badly, he’d forgotten to make up a reason to call. “No, I was just- I know you’ve been meeting that new guy you’ve been seeing for lunch, but do you want to join me tomorrow? I was thinking we could go, uh… Maybe that cafe that just opened?”

“Sorry, Tim, but I can’t tomorrow.” But her voice seems somehow colder than usual, even if Tim can’t place why. “I have to do follow up Case 0132306. I’ll be investigating the Trophy Room.”

“The taxidermy shop? Do you want someone to go with you?” Tim asks, and he’s sitting up straighter than he was a moment ago, mind alight with glassy eyes and sandbag bodies and Sasha a cold, empty stranger, “That case sounded dangerous, I could—“

“I think I’ll be fine on my own.” Sasha says, and Tim concedes.

“I know. I know you will.” Tim says. “Sorry, I just worry. I don’t…”

_Want anything to happen to you,_ he wants to say, _Not you, too._

He doesn’t really know what stops him.

“Well,” Sasha says, “If you’ll excuse me?”

“Yeah, okay. See you tomorrow.” Tim says. She repeats it back, and the line drops. Tim’s eye is drawn once again to the image, the stranger sitting on his coffee table. Her smile is warm and light, and looking at her, Sasha…

Tim has his right hand on her page, and his left braced against the book. He pulls, the sound of tearing almost cathartic. The unfamiliar smile disappears as he balls the picture up, crushing it in his hands as tight as he can. He bins it a moment later with far more force than needed, and he doesn’t look back.

Sasha is _fine._ Some fucking graphite isn’t going to take that away from him.

(One day, Tim will dig through his garbage, even though he knows the bag has long been changed. One day, Tim will tear through his sketchbook, looking for a stranger, and all he’ll find is half-sketched women with cold, empty, familiar smiles. One day, Tim will regret, but for now, watching the paper disappear among the detritus of his life makes him feel safe.)

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this instead of editing the chapter of my time travel fic that is supposed to update. beholden readers, d. dont look at me
> 
> anyway. i hope you enjoyed! <3 feel free to find me on [tumblr](https://asexualzoro.tumblr.com/post/634174136518868992/pressed-flower-driflew-the-magnus-archives) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/asexualzoro/status/1325231312844836864?s=20) @ asexualzoro


End file.
